aura's of emotions

Elara never expected the color to disappear from her life.

Though she had more talent than fame, she used to fill her canvases with vivid, imagined landscapes. But now, in the neon-lit streets of Neo-Kyoto, where rain slid down holographic ads and the air always buzzed with electric glow, everything looked gray. Her tiny apartment mirrored that emptiness. The canvases leaned blank against the walls, waiting for inspiration that wouldn’t come.

One evening, rummaging through the city’s underground for scraps, a glimmer of silver caught her attention. She found a pair of delicate, almost otherworldly spectacles tucked inside a broken bio-scanner. The moment she put them on, everything changed.

Suddenly, emotions had color. People walked through the city wrapped in vibrant energy — a businessman pulsed with jagged red stress, a couple under a flickering sign glowed gold with warmth, a street musician radiated a swirl of deep blues and hopeful violets. Elara was stunned. What she saw wasn’t just beauty — it was feeling, made visible.

And so, her art came alive again.

She painted like she hadn’t in years — capturing joy, loneliness, connection. She painted the hum of a busy market, the silence of a lone figure on a bridge, the warmth of friends sharing laughter over noodles. Her work wasn’t just beautiful; it was emotional truth poured onto canvas.

The world noticed. Critics raved. Collectors rushed in. Elara became the name on everyone’s lips in Neo-Kyoto. But with recognition came something darker.

He called himself Kael, a gallery curator with a smooth voice and deep, searching eyes. He was kind, generous with praise, and full of curiosity. Too much curiosity. He always circled back to one question — where did her inspiration come from?

One evening, they stood together in front of her latest piece — a glowing crowd, each figure lit with a unique emotion. For a moment, Kael’s aura shimmered strangely. The lavender calm she’d always seen in him flickered with gray uncertainty.

“How do you do it, Elara?” he asked quietly. “It’s like you can see right through them.”

Before she could answer, two figures appeared at the gallery entrance. Suits black as shadow. Their presence radiated nothing — just cold, silvery stillness. A void.

Kael’s expression hardened. “We need to go,” he whispered.

They ran through the back streets of the city, chased by silence.

Kael wasn’t who he said he was. He worked for the Collective — a secret organization that had created the glasses. Not to inspire, but to control. They believed emotions were messy, dangerous — things to be tracked, predicted, eliminated.

In the decaying sub-levels of Neo-Kyoto, cornered and breathless, Kael turned to her. Regret swirled in his aura like a storm.

“They’ll never stop,” he said. “The Director believes peace only comes when emotion is gone.”

Elara looked at her hands — hands that once brought color back into a colorless world. To live in the Collective’s cold, calculated future was unthinkable.

But something stirred inside her. A new emotion. One she hadn’t seen before. Bright. Bold. Defiant. Courage.

She pulled the glasses off. The world turned gray again — but it was a different kind of gray. Not empty. Not lifeless. It was a blank canvas, full of possibility. Hers to fill.

With a cry, she smashed the glasses against the wall. The shattering echoed like a final decision. The agents froze. Kael didn’t. He lunged, buying her the seconds she needed to run.

She never saw him again.

Back in her studio, Elara painted once more — not what she saw, but what she felt. Her work became abstract, deeper. It carried the memory of light, the echo of emotion. A golden warmth. A melancholic blue. A fierce, red choice made in the dark.

Her fame returned. But this time, on her terms.

People still flocked to her exhibitions — not to see the hidden colors of the world, but to rediscover the ones within themselves.

And in the heart of a city that once looked grey, Elara finally found her own true colors.